Your career – a home for what you like doing most

If you are constantly looking forward to your next raise, or weekend, or workplace grapevine, this idea may sound far fetched to you. We have come to accept work merely as a burden and as duty to be discharged. But by this time you have begun defining success as -professional progress and health and happiness. Having to deal with work as burden and duty will not make you happy nor it is going to do any good to your health.

If you follow lives of successful people, you will find they have stuck to doing what they like doing. They had to overcome odds and setbacks. They had to endure failure and criticism. They made detours and took diversions -those inevitable compromises of life -only to get going in the direction which they had set for themselves.

Therefore, think of your career as a home for what you like doing most. It may take time, you may have to sequence things, you may have to bide your time, but you must set a direction.

You have found out what you like doing most. If it is ‘writing’ (for example) you know that you can keep doing it happily day in and day out even if the rewards take long to come.

So, you like to write (for example). The next question is for what purpose you wish to use your writing skills. Writing advertising copy may be one way of using your skills. Other applications of writing can be: stories, lyrics or dialog for films, news reports, business analysis etc. These occupations are ‘homes’ for your writing skills. You need other skills as well to be ‘comfortable’ in any of these homes.

You need to decide for what purpose you will use your writing. Writing may keep you happy but it has to be ‘useful’ for others so that you get paid for it. If you don’t like to write but like doing something else like ‘programming’ or ‘drawing’ or ‘mountaineering’ you will need to find a ‘home’ for it.